Traditionally, brain tumors and intracranial hemorrhages (ICH) are treated by removing most of the top half of the patient's skull and resecting healthy white matter to get to the tumor or ICH of interest. This approach has the disadvantages of: permanent removal of healthy white matter; increased trauma to the brain via de-pressurization after removal of a large portion of the skull; and long recovery time due to large cranial trauma.
The neurosurgeon is typically guided in these procedures using a navigation system that displays the position of surgical tools overlaid on pre-surgical Magnetic Resonance (MR) or Computed Tomography (CT) images in real-time. In these procedures, one or more targets and a surgical path are defined. An ideal surgical path will be determined by the surgeon before the surgery but is not encoded or reflected by the navigation system.
Referring to FIG. 1A, an exemplary navigation system 100 is shown to support minimally invasive access port-based surgery. In FIG. 1A, a neurosurgeon 101 conducts a minimally invasive port-based surgery on a patient 102 in an operating room (OR) environment. The navigation system 100 includes an equipment tower, tracking system, displays and tracked instruments to assist the surgeon 101 during his procedure. An operator 103 is also present to operate, control and provide assistance for the navigation system 100.
Once a procedure is planned with a planning system, a logistics coordinator is required to prepare an operating room prior to a surgical procedure, which can take as long as three hours. A lack of the correct tools and consumables during surgery can cause the surgical team to compromise the procedure. Additionally, sometimes counting parts and tools in and out of the surgical field results in counting errors and missing parts.
Thus, there is a need for a system and method to manage equipment and provide the equipment to the neurosurgeon that will lead to the most informed and least damaging trajectory during surgical procedures.